Category: Violence

A bomb threat was made at a Chicago school after right-wing media published an edited sex-ed video

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/12/bomb-threat-made-chicago-school-right-wing-media-published-edited-sex-ed-video/

And they are going after schools with bombs to protect the children.   They shut down hospitals denying children with cancer treatment to protect the children.   They scream vile threats with disgusting accusations using words most parents try to keep from their children in front of kids leaving them in tears and afraid because their parents took them to read a story read by a man in costume, all to protect the children.   Do you see their real goal?   They don’t care about the children.  They want the morality of a distant past enforced just like the US Christian Taliban.  They want the gays, lesbians (they might get a pass with the straight men), trans people, and all the rest of the LGBTQI+ gone.   Totally gone.   Think of it.   Out of sight, not talked about, not accepted, targeted when discovered, mob rule.  Oh yes the enforcers of the right the Proud Boys also got involved.   People need to see what is happening openly in the US where now in some states some people’s rights are curtailed and fear is spread by force from a regressive right.    Hugs

Far-right group Project Veritas published an edited, undercover video implying students were being indoctrinated into queer sex.
 
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A bomb threat was made at a Chicago school after right-wing media published an edited sex-ed video
Photo: Screenshot/Project Veritas

The Francis W. Parker School in Chicago was evacuated last week after a bomb threat was emailed to administrators.

The threat came after far-right activist group Project Veritas published a highly edited, undercover video implying students at the elite K-12 school in Lincoln Park were being indoctrinated into queer sex.

Chicago police said the emailed threat warned that a bomb would be placed on school grounds. The school’s security team determined the message “originated from out of the country,” officials said.

Administrators emailed parents on Monday afternoon: “After an extensive search by the authorities, we write to let you know that the campus has been cleared by the Chicago Police Department. Our campus is safe.”

Project Veritas posted the video on December 7, five days before the threat was emailed. The video “report” was picked up by right-wing media, including Fox News and Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok.

Sean Hannity opened his show the next evening with a Fox News Alert and the ominous warning: “The woke indoctrination of your children continues.”

In the video, the Parker School’s Dean of Students, Joseph Bruno, speaks candidly with an undercover Project Veritas operative about a lesson presented by a local LGBTQ+ health center during Pride month about queer sexual health, including the use of sex toys. The lesson was optional and attended by students who expressed interest in the subject, a fact not mentioned in the video.

Bruno also talks about a visit to the school by a drag queen.

The group promoted the video with a series of hashtags including #ButtPlugDean and #ExposeGroomers.

The same day Project Veritas published the highly edited conversation, Libs Of TikTok reposted it with an equally misleading headline: “Dean in Chicago, IL school brags about handing out dildos, butt plugs, and lube to students while teaching them about queer sex. He also brought in a drag queen to perform for students.”

On December 8, Project Veritas leader James O’Keefe stalked Bruno at the school’s entrance and dragged parents and staff.

Soon after, the local Proud Boys chapter and far right-wing advocacy group Awake Illinois began promoting the story. Awake Illinois first came to prominence protesting school mask mandates and the unfounded issue of teaching Critical Race Theory to children. The Proud Boys Northern Illinois chapter doxxed Bruno on Telegram, posting his phone number and email address.

The Parker School was forced to take down its Twitter account after being deluged with online attacks.

Both Project Veritas and O’Keefe were banned from Twitter last year for posting misleading content. The platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, recently reinstated both.

Parker School student @leilaclaire summed up the chain of events in a Twitter post over the weekend:

“On Thurs Project Veritas (amplified by Libs of TT) snuck into my high school and recorded a teacher, edited the hell out of it, and chased him/released his info.”

“On Mon, the school received a bomb threat. Yesterday, the PV founder was unbanned.

“So, yes Elon, tell us of your jet.”

Republicans Aren’t Even Willing to Admit There’s an Anti-LGBTQ+ Violence Problem

https://www.them.us/story/club-q-congressional-hearing-anti-lgbtq-violence

In a Congressional hearing, Club Q survivors pushed for action to curb anti-LGBTQ+ hate. Republicans focused on “violent crime” instead.
 

BY SAMANTHA RIEDEL

Michael Anderson a survivor of Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs and Matthew Haynes a founding owner of the club in a...
Michael Anderson (left), a survivor of Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, and Matthew Haynes, a founding owner of the club, in a Congressional hearing on anti-LGBTQ+ extremism Wednesday.Tom Williams/Getty Images

Two sides swiftly emerged at Wednesday’s Congressional hearing on anti-LGBTQ+ violence: one that was ready to talk about our community’s rights and protections, and another that just wanted to blame the woke left. 

The special hearing on “The Rise of Anti-LGBTQI+ Extremism and Violence in the United States” was assembled in direct response to the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs by a far-right extremist which left five dead. But while the witnesses and Democrats discussed the issue at hand, which outgoing committee chair Carolyn Maloney called “one of the most pressing issues that our nation will face in the years to come,” Republicans focused their efforts on turning anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes into just a symptom of an alleged wave of violent crime, blaming everything from Black Lives Matter and efforts to defund the police to poor border security and fentanyl.

Witnesses at the hearing included Michael Anderson and James Slaugh, two Club Q survivors; Club Q owner Matthew Haynes; and Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the PULSE shooting, all of whom gave impassioned testimony about their experiences, trauma, and hope for the future. “Hate speech turns into hate action, and actions based on hate almost took my life from me at 25 years old,” Anderson told the committee. Wolf echoed the sentiment, calling out “cynical politicians and greedy grifters” like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who willfully “pour gasoline on anti-LGBTQ hysteria” to make money and accumulate political capital.

 

Haynes, who said attending the signing of the Respect for Marriage Act on Tuesday was “the first joy and pride I have felt since these horrific events at Club Q,” bluntly shared with the committee several examples of anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech he’d received since the shooting. The messages were filled with slurs, professing happiness that five people were dead and disappointment the killer hadn’t shot more. 

“I ask you today not simply what are you doing to safeguard LGBTQ Americans,” Haynes said, “but rather what are you and other leaders doing to make America unsafe for LGBTQ people.”

 

Witnesses also included Human Rights Campaign president Kelly Robinson, who called hate-motivated violence like the Club Q shooting “the tragic result of a society that devalues our lives, particularly the lives of Black and brown transgender and gender-nonconforming people.” Most of the witnesses stressed that Republicans’ fearmongering and misinformation around trans people and drag performers in particular directly emboldened open violence on hospitals, libraries, and on the street.

But Republicans brought one witness of their own to frame their points — Charles Lehman, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, which has long pushed for policies like “broken window” policing that harm marginalized communities. Lehman was on hand not to talk about anti-LGBTQ+ violence in any specific capacity, but to generally advocate for more police funding and harsher federal hate crime penalties, “bringing the full power of the justice system to bear” on offenders.

Lehman’s testimony was an obvious overture to what Republicans really wanted to talk about, the same talking point they’d stressed throughout this year’s midterm campaigns: that violent crime is allegedly on the rise, and it’s actually the Democrats’ fault any of this happened. Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the incoming committee chair who literally opened his remarks with the phrase “thoughts and prayers,” squarely blamed left-wing “defund the police and soft-on-crime policies” for a general rise in violence he denied is unique to LGBTQ+ communities. 

“We should be focused on the alarming rise of violent crime across our country, crimes that target all races and ethnicities,” Comer said, citing elevated homicide numbers in several large cities. Recent analyses from both the Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI show that while homicide rates have increased during the pandemic, there was no national increase in overall violent crime over the last three years. 

Comer, of course, has a motive for obfuscating culpability: he’s one co-sponsor of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Protect Children’s Innocence” bill, currently in committee, which would make providing a minor with any gender-affirming care a felony and prohibit federal funds from paying for such care.

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At Stonewall, Club Q’s Co-Founder and Staff Gather to Envision the Path Ahead
On Friday, Club Q family and supporters fundraised to reopen the nightlife haven at the center of the Colorado Springs shooting.

Other Republicans followed suit, like Pennsylvania Rep. Fred Keller, who said the committee should be “looking at this holistically as an American crime crisis.” Jody Hice of Georgia, in his last committee meeting as a representative, equated anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech to Maxine Waters’ 2018 comments encouraging people to make then-current Trump administration officials “not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Pat Fallon of Texas, aggressively questioning Wolf, invited comparison to James Hodgkinson, a Bernie Sanders supporter who shot Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and four others in 2017. “None of us blamed Bernie Sanders because he didn’t do it,” Fallon told Wolf, clearly agitated. In fact, some Republicans including then-President Trump did blame Sanders and other Democrats for allegedly inciting the shooting. 

David Cicilline, co-chair of the House Equality Caucus, said he was “disappointed, but not surprised” that almost no Republicans asked the witnesses about anti-LGBTQ+ extremism. “Republicans are happy to discuss our community when they’re attacking our rights, when they’re crying on the House floor because they oppose marriage equality,” Cicilline pointed out during the hearing. “But when it comes to actually discussing the violence against our community and its causes, just a quick condemnation of what happened at Club Q, and violence broadly, and nothing more. 

“In my view, this is shameful,” Cicilline added.

Proud Boys shifted to anti-LGBTQ+ action this year

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/12/proud-boys-shifted-anti-lgbtq-action-year/

As this article makes clear the Proud Boys are the Hitler Brownshirts of our time.   The right wing group is to force people to follow the wishes of the right by threats of violence and intimidation.  It is domestic terrorism endorsed by the republicans.  “While the Proud Boys used to largely host rallies where they were the headliners, now they come in to act as the muscle for other reactionary groups,” Southern Poverty Law Center senior research analyst Cassie Miller explained.   Hugs

The far-right extremist group’s shift in focus reflects the GOP’s renewed attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.
 
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Proud Boys
Proud BoysPhoto: Shutterstock

Far-right extremist group the Proud Boys abruptly shifted their focus to anti-LGBTQ+ action in mid-2022. According to a new report from Vice News, the violent all-male, neo-fascist group’s involvement in anti-LGBTQ+ protests tripled this year compared to 2021.

The data comes from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) as well as Vice’s own tracking of Proud Boys activity, which found that 100 percent of anti-LGBTQ+ actions involving the gang took place between late May and December of this year.

The shift reflects a new tactic following the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Local chapters of the decentralized group have since been forging alliances with other right-wing activists in their communities around culture war issues like anti-vaccine efforts, abortion, masking mandates, and so-called parental rights in education.

“While the Proud Boys used to largely host rallies where they were the headliners, now they come in to act as the muscle for other reactionary groups,” Southern Poverty Law Center senior research analyst Cassie Miller explained.

As baseless attacks labeling the LGBTQ+ community as “groomers” and “pedophiles” have increased this year, so has the Proud Boys’ involvement in anti-LGBTQ+ protests. As Vice reports, members of the gang in at least 11 states showed up at libraries and restaurants hosting drag queen story hours and drag brunches. According to the ACLED, 20 percent of all demonstrations involving Proud Boys since 2020 have turned violent, and members of the group are increasingly likely to be armed.

Most recently, 50 Proud Boys, many of them armed and wearing combat gear, showed up alongside members of other far-right hate groups at a church in Columbus, Ohio, where a holiday drag queen story hour event was scheduled to take place earlier this month.

Increasing Proud Boys activity in the South and Southwest seems to have coincided with increased anti-LGBTQ+ activism from so-called “parental rights” groups and Christian nationalists. “Where these groups have popped up around the country this year, the Proud Boys have followed,” said Southern Poverty Law Center’s Miller.

Miller said that the group appears to be acting “in lockstep” with the GOP and right-wing media in its focus on the LGBTQ+ community.

Even more troublingly, some Proud Boys chapters have apparently made inroads to political legitimacy in their local communities through charity work. ACLED director of communications Sam Jones said this may be a tactic meant to “deepen connections with an existing base in the community, expand local networks, recruit, and draw lines separating the potentially allied in-groups they aim to ‘protect’ from the demonized out-groups that they target.”

And it may be working. Video from the Columbus, Ohio, demonstration showed one police officer high-fiving a member of the Proud Boys.

 

Furious Texas Paul exposes SECRET RECORDING of Marjorie Taylor Greene calling for ARMED INSURRECTION

Radical Right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was caught on Camera declaring that if she and Steve Bannon were in charge of January 6th, rioters would’ve been armed and would have won. Meidas Contributor Texas Paul reacts.